Did Hu Shi Intend to Resist Something?A Symptomatic Reading of “Power and ideology in translation research in Twentieth-Century China: An analysis of three seminal works”

Since the “culture turn” in Translation Studies, it has become widely recognized that translated works and academic discourse often reflect the translator’s and scholar’s stance towards the prevailing ideological consciousness and poetic traditions in their respective environments. In her article entitled “Power and ideology in translation research in Twentieth-Century China: An analysis of three seminal works”, Martha Cheung argues that Hu Shi’s “The Translated Literature of Buddhism (Part 1 & 2)” serves as a resistance to the mainstream tradition of writing in classical Chinese (wenyanwen). However, employing a symptomatic reading approach to analyze Cheung’s article from three perspectives, namely the problematic and research questions, the cracks in the texts, and the silence of the discussion, the research finds that classical Chinese was not dominant over Chinese vernacular (baihuawen) in Chinese literary system in early 20th Century, and Hu Shi’s primary objective was to advocate the construction of a baihuawen literary system through translation activities.